Columnist Dean Juipe: Two schools of thought on Rocker

Dean Juipe

Wednesday, Jan. 12, 2000 | 10:30 a.m.

Dean Juipe's column appears Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday and Friday. His boxing notebook appears Thursday. Reach him at juipe@vegas.com or 259-4084.

The question is not whether baseball has the legal right to punish Atlanta Braves pitcher John Rocker for the near-blasphemous comments he made to a national magazine, because, clearly, it does.

It's right there in every player's contract: "The player agrees to perform his services diligently and faithfully, to keep himself in first-class physical condition, to obey the club's training rules, and pledges himself to the American public to conform to high standards of personal conduct, fair play and good sportsmanship."

When Rocker railed to Sports Illustrated two weeks ago about minorities, homosexuals and immigrants, he certainly overstepped his contractual bounds.

Baseball has the right to suspend him indefinitely, for life, or for any length of time it so chooses.

But should it?

There are two distinct sides to this argument and each has its merits.

The more vigilant approach would be to suspend Rocker -- a fire-balling reliever who is an integral member of the National League champions -- immediately and virtually force him from the sport much as Los Angeles Dodgers executive Al Campanis was banished for his 1987 remarks about African-Americans lacking the basic necessities to work in administrative positions.

Given these politically correct times, especially in comparison to when Campanis shot himself in the foot, Rocker's remarks were even more offensive. He verbally abused an African-American teammate -- "a black monkey" -- as well as homosexuals -- not wanting to sit "next to some queer with AIDS" -- and immigrants -- "I'm not a very big fan of foreigners ... how the hell did they get in this country?"

He didn't hold anything back, exposing himself as an ill-tempered redneck. He was neither amusing nor insightful and in the ensuing days seemingly thousands of Americans have expressed a desire to see him banned from baseball.

His status has become a national issue.

But compassion can emerge from the most unlikely sources and Rocker, a 25-year-old southpaw who saved 38 games for the Braves last year, has received some support as baseball commissioner Bud Selig wavers on what to do.

A black teammate said Rocker "has suffered enough" and that baseball needn't add to his miseries. And the well-respected Andrew Young, once the mayor of Atlanta and once the U.S. ambassador to the United Nations and now a news columnist, is an African-American who has taken a forgiving point of view, writing that "Rocker is still young enough to change and be redeemed ... (and that) similar insecurities and fears are just beneath the surface in many of us."

While Rocker gains nothing from the notion that comments similar to his "can be heard in any locker room in the country" as some have claimed, he is helped by the fact you can't truly legislate morality.

As such, Selig is in a difficult position. At the least he will order sensitivity training for Rocker and at the most he will initiate a legal skirmish by suspending him for life.

Rocker has already shown himself to be lacking in societal skills. He may even be an idiot.

But throwing him out of baseball probably serves no real purpose. He will never live down what he said, and that may be punishment enough.